


you were summer: sizzling incandescence and scarlet (I Am In Awe)

by henryclerval



Series: I Am [3]
Category: Almost Human
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Injuries, Not Beta Read, Robots, Stream of Consciousness, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 21:10:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/henryclerval/pseuds/henryclerval
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s scared. He wonders if John can see that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you were summer: sizzling incandescence and scarlet (I Am In Awe)

John has a freckle behind his ear. 

Dorian wonders if he even knows that its there. It’s hidden behind hair and skin and cartilage and a bit of sweat and a bit of blood and if Dorian hadn’t been bracing himself against the wall he would’ve lifted a hand to wipe it away. But each shot is pushing him closer to John and his hand there, rough against brick, is necessary. 

There’s a bead of sweat that is cumulating at the edge of John’s hairline—there are plenty, all of them sweltering underneath the pressure of a firefight and the stronger shoves that come with an advancing hostile. He watches it swell and swell until, bloated and cloudy, it slinks and slides its way down the curves of John’s skull, meandering toward the jaw, and Dorian’s mouth is always dry but there’s a cotton quality to it now. 

A particularly powerful blast shoves him harder against John, his knees weakening with the sudden overload; no pain, not traditionally, but each circuit in his body shrieking a distress signal. He squeezes his eyes shut tight, fingers digging into the rough wall, as he scrambles to get his mind together again—he’s not made to take this kind of repeated damage, he is as delicate as he is sturdy and the rounds are flaking away his back plate. He worries that soon his wires and plates won’t protect, that the jungle of cables and gear inside him can’t act as the final net, and his worth as a shield will be negated. 

The thought makes his neural response louder, CPU grinding loud enough to be heard over gunfire. Being the reason for John’s injuries—fatal or not—shakes him as much as it steels his place. He will not be moved. He will stay put, feet on the ground, hands braced, as long as John needs to be protected; this is why he’s here. This is how he’ll be remembered. No pictures on a mantle, no time-dependent portraits on a pane of glass, this is physical. Real. Tangible. He can taste gunpowder in the air and when he finally manages to open his eyes he’s greeted to dark worry with darker circles underneath. 

Has John not been sleeping well? 

Concern is short lived, another searing howl from his neural receptors catching his attention as a bullet whistles through the very edge of his neck. It chips at the brick near John’s head and Dorian is well aware that he can’t keep this up. If he had blood in his body he’d feel lightheaded, he can’t keep sorting through his own distress signals and he wonders, briefly, if the pieces and parts of androids that litter the cement around them are picking up on his cries for help. 

John presses closer to him, worms a good few shots out that ring in Dorian’s ears. They’re close to the point where he can smell the soap underneath John’s aftershave, and Dorian does his best to focus on that instead of the bullet that goes into his shoulder. 

John seems to be aware that Dorian is not designed to be a shield—the frequency of his fire has increased greatly—but Dorian won’t admit it. Can’t own up to the fact that though he never really felt his limbs in the first place, his nervous system isn’t responding throughout his entire body. 

He’s scared. He wonders if John can see that. 

Dorian’s body lurches again, not as solid as the first time he’d been hit with the fray of a shotgun. It seems to be enough to throw John over the edge—Dorian can’t be sure, the roar in his head is otherworldly and he braces himself against his partner momentarily—as he feels an arm around his waist, his body being shifted, just a few more rounds too close to his ear for comfort and a slurry of half-formed words. 

John holsters his gun and props him up, and for a moment Dorian can’t look him right in the eye; he knows he’s expensive, to be replaced would be to blemish John’s record again. Not a full second passes before he’s not given a choice—John takes his chin and twists it toward him, half murmurs and half whispers cloaked in roughness that comes from firefights. _You’re an idiot_ , he hisses with what’s left of him, as he grips the front of Dorian’s windbreaker and fists it again and again, a nervous tic that Dorian is having difficulty focusing on. John’s eyes are such a nice shade of brown. 

_I know_ , is what Dorian relinquishes after a while—his voice box damaged, it comes out static and warped and even if he had the capacity to apologize he wouldn’t. His circuits are falling from him in waves and his back is shredded, gears are falling out of him and John is whole. John is so very whole that he doesn’t care that some of his communication systems aren’t working right, that his hand is skimming down the brick wall and finding its place on the back of John’s head. 

John doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t tense, he barely needs encouragement and moves more than Dorian’s hand can usher. He kisses exactly how Dorian had imagined—rough and needy and selfish and it’s everything that he wants, is desperate for; it’s short lived and breathless, Dorian can feel the flush on John’s face when they finally separate. 

Dorian won’t let him go far—he’s slumping, sluggish, pressing their foreheads together in an instinctive way to try to get what he’s thinking across more directly. 

But John is organic and misses the point; he closes his eyes and keeps quiet as Dorian brushes his thumb against the freckle behind John’s ear.


End file.
